Tetragrammaton

Four letters

Vocalisation

YHWH and Hebrew script

Uncertainty in the first half of the nineteenth century

Yahweh

Non-biblical Texts

Texts with Tetragrammaton

Texts with similar theonyms

Magical papyri

Hebrew Bible

The Tetragrammaton in the Hebrew Bible

Leningrad Codex

Dead Sea Scrolls

Septuagint and other Old Greek versions

2nd-century BCE

• Papyrus Rylands 458 – contains fragments of Deuteronomy. Has blank spaces where the copyist perhaps had to write either the Tetragrammaton or the word κύριος. It has been dated to 2nd century BCE.

  1st-century BCE

• 4QpapLXXLev^b – contains fragments of the Book of Leviticus, chapters 1 to 5. In two verses: 3:12; 4:27 the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrew Bible is represented by the Greek trigrammaton ΙΑΩ. This manuscript is dated to the 1st century BCE.
• Papyrus Fouad 266b – contains fragments of Deuteronomy, chapters 10 to 33, dated to 1st century BCE. The Tetragrammaton appears in square Hebrew/Aramaic script. According to a disputed view, the first copyist left a blank space marked with a dot, and another inscribed the letters.
• Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3522 – contains parts of two verses of chapter 42 of the Book of Job and has the Tetragrammaton written in paleo-Hebrew letters. It has been dated to the 1st century BCE.

  1st-century CE

• 8HevXII gr – dated to the 1st century CE, includes three fragments published separately.
• *Se2grXII has the Tetragrammaton in 1 place
• *8HevXII a in 24 places, whole or in part.
• *8HevXII b in 4 places.

  1st to 2nd-century CE

• Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5101 – contains fragments of the Book of Psalms. It has been dated between year 50 and 150 CE and it has YHWH in palaeo-Hebrew script.

  3rd-century CE

• Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1007 – this manuscript in vitela form contains Genesis 2 and 3. The divine name is written with a double yodh. It has been assigned paleographically to the 3rd century.
• Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 656 – containing fragments of the Book of Genesis, chapters 14 to 27. The first copyist left blank spaces in which a second wrote Kyrios. It is dated to the late 2nd or early 3rd century CE.
• Papyrus Berlin 17213 – containing fragments of the Book of Genesis, chapter 19. Contains one blank space that may have been for the name of God, but Emanuel Tov thinks that it was to mark the end of a paragraph. It has been dated to 3rd century CE.

  6th-century CE

• Taylor-Schechter 16.320 – Tetragrammaton in Hebrew, 550 – 649 CE.
• Codex Marchalianus – uses ΙΑΩ as the divine name, but in the margin represents the Tetragrammaton by the Greek letters ΠΙΠΙ. It is a 6th-century Greek manuscript.

  Other translations

3rd-century CE

• Papyrus Vindobonensis Greek 39777, the P.Vindob.G.39777 – dated to late 3rd century or beginning 4th century. It has the Tetragrammaton in "old Hebrew", not paleo-Hebrew, but "archaic letters."

  5th-century CE

• AqTaylor, this manuscript of the Aquila version is dated after the middle of the 5th century, but not later than the beginning of the 6th century.
• AqBurkitt – a palimpsest manuscript of the Aquila version dated late 5th century or early 6th century.

  Hexaplaric manuscripts

7th-century CE

• Taylor-Schechter 12.182 – a Hexapla manuscript with Tetragrammaton in Greek letters ΠΙΠΙ. It is from 7th-century.

  9th-century CE

• Ambrosiano O 39 sup. – the latest Greek manuscript containing the name of God is Origen's Hexapla, transmitting among other translations the text of the Septuagint. This codex, copied from a much earlier original, comes from the late 9th century, and is stored in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

Apocrypha

Patristic writings

• Diodorus Siculus writes Ἰαῶ ;
• Irenaeus reports that the Gnostics formed a compound Ἰαωθ with the last syllable of Sabaoth. He also reports that the Valentinian heretics use Ἰαῶ ;
• Clement of Alexandria reports: "the mystic name of four letters which was affixed to those alone to whom the adytum was accessible, is called Ἰαοὺ"; manuscript variants also have the forms ἰαοῦε and ἰὰ οὐὲ.
• Origen, Ἰαώ ;
• Porphyry according to Eusebius, Ἰευώ ;
• Epiphanius, who was born in Palestine and spent a considerable part of his life there, gives Ἰά and Ἰάβε and explains Ἰάβε as meaning He who was and is and always exists.
• Jerome, can be read Iaho;
• Theodoret writes Ἰαώ ; he also reports that the Samaritans say Ἰαβέ or Ἰαβαί, while the Jews say Ἀϊά.
• Jacob of Edessa, Jehjeh;
• Jerome speaks of certain Greek writers who misunderstood the Hebrew letters יהוה as the Greek letters ΠΙΠΙ, thus changing YHWH to pipi.

  Peshitta

Vulgate

Usage in religious traditions

Judaism

Spoken prohibitions

Written prohibitions

Kabbalah

Samaritans

Christianity

Christian translations

Eastern Orthodoxy

Catholicism

• Exodus 3:15
• Exodus 15:3
• Exodus 17:15

Citations